Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to ask questions again of the Minister of Health and Social Services, and it’s along the lines, as well, about the lack of services for being able to have babies in Hay River. It’s not on the midwifery line.
It’s going to be a while before we probably have resident doctors in Hay River who have the credentials that would allow us to allow our residents of Hay River to have their children in Hay River. That being the case, they have to come to Yellowknife or they can go someplace else, but most do come to Yellowknife. They have to come three weeks before their due date. I believe they receive a $50 per day allowance or they can stay at the Vital Abel Boarding Home. This boarding home, although it may be a wonderful service, is in a very out of the way location, and it is not convenient unless you want to be down there the whole time. It costs a lot for cabs and so on.
I have an idea. For those coming from Hay River, $50 is a long ways from the cost of any hotel room in Yellowknife. I would like to ask the Minister if his department has ever entertained the idea of having some form of a residence here in Yellowknife that could be accessed by expectant families coming into Yellowknife to await the arrival of a baby.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe that we have examined the possibility of having a residence for expecting mothers here in Yellowknife to accommodate mothers from out of the communities.
Does he know what the per diem cost to this government is of the Vital Abel Boarding Home? If someone was going there to await the arrival of a baby and they were there for three weeks, there must be a cost to this government on a daily basis. Does he know what that cost would be?
I don’t have the daily cost of the individuals to stay at Vital Abel, but I can easily get that information for the Member.
I’m going to guess that that per diem cost per patient is not a small amount of money, and I also think that there is probably a fair amount of uptake of beds in that facility. When you look at a community the size of Hay River, which is the second largest community in the Northwest Territories, and the number of people that have to come over here and pay out of their pockets causing financial stress, I think that we need to do a cost-benefit analysis of some other form of accommodation for expectant mothers when they come here that is perhaps specific to Hay River or specific to communities outside of Yellowknife besides the Vital Abel option.
Hopefully, by the time we look at the cost of trying to get a residence in Hay River we would have the new health centre functioning with doctors and midwives, hopefully. But I have no issue with looking at the possibility and examining what the costs of Vital Abel are and what it would cost to provide that service for Hay River.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Minister for those answers. I want to tell him that I’d be very happy to work with him on that. I think that we are hopeful we will have doctors. I’m hopeful we’ll have midwives. I’m hopeful we’ll have a lot of services that won’t require people to travel. But in the meantime, even a rented residence dedicated to offsetting the costs of expectant mothers waiting here in Yellowknife to have babies would be great, so I would just like to offer to help him work on that cost- benefit analysis.
As we examine this possibility, we will work with the Member to look at the costs and so on.
